Fool-Grease for the Foundation: The Lambricks' Just Desserts
by Quillon42
Summary: When Iris loses the entire grand prize shortly after surviving Shepard Lambrick's game, she decides to visit a similar event upon her former "hosts"...with a bit of assistance from someone else who survived the affair.


FOOL-GREASE FOR THE FOUNDATION: THE LAMBRICKS' JUST DESSERTS

By Quillon42

It had not been since that intense era when the man was an agent for MI5, so long ago, that the bald-pated butler-brute known as Bevans had been faced with such imminent danger, such life-threatening mechanisms that loomed in his immediate vicinity.

But even back then, this steroid-saturated garden-gnome guard was the one who was the administrator of the torture in question…not the abject object of it, as he most definitively was now.

And indeed it was now, as that feral filly dallied in front of him, as the man himself sat there drugged and debilitated otherwise…he now knew how everyone had felt from the drug czars he interrogated in decades past to the dinner guests whom he maimed these past few years. The point was driven ever more cogently home as that blonde bogeywoman brandished the pliers in one hand, and the pruning shears in the other, and asked which he would prefer to visit upon his own person.

From across the kitchen floor, the boss of Bevans known as Shepard Lambrick gawked on gapingly at the intruding temptress Iris, she who won his most recent game and who somehow penetrated the potency of his security detail to render him, his son, and his right hand man as hostage as the lady herself was only so many evenings ago.

Upon realizing that he was now as helpless as the guests he hosted at his last great event, the ruthless, invariably verbose raconteur found himself presently unable to let utter a solitary syllable.

To elaborate a bit further, for those unfamiliar with the Foundation's fatal fetes…the motivation for such malicious behavior stemmed from a sojourn the aforementioned Iris experienced, she and seven others invited for what was advertised and alleged to be "dinner and a game." All who attended by way of Lambrick's generosity, they were individuals foundering for so long without any hint of good fortune, all desperate for some kink of kismet to come around and kickstart their existences up into a plateau of prosperity, or at least some level of functionality. Each had his or her own demons or devices which drove the dinner/game guest into ruin or dire circumstances otherwise.

For the beneficent young blonde Iris, it was the impromptu exit of her parents from this plane, and the pressing urgency of ushering in a donor to deliver her terminally-ill brother Raleigh from…elimination, from the game of life, far too soon.

For the kindly, elderly paralytic Linda, it was the desire to subsidize some kind of treatment, some remedy rendering her able to walk once more—some shot in the leg, so to speak, that would enable her to become as ambulatory as all else whom the lady encountered in her everyday milieu.

For the wartime traverser Travis Schulke, it was to afford healthcare at a stratum similar to that which Raleigh required…but while the latter was in need of physical rehabilitation, Soldier Schulke was starving for succor of the psychiatric kind. On too many occasions had he witnessed his brethren-in-arms suffering everything from existence-extricating gunshots to wrathful whippings at the hands of insurgent tormentors. Surely what he would encounter as a guest at this gracious dinner reception would stand at the polar opposite of such experiences.

For the hunky Iowan hayseed Lucas, it was to assist his sisters, all three of them, in escaping the lending-predatory clutches of Cedar Rapids' most ruthless loan sharks. Sure, one might think such an accolade to be rather ridiculous…until one watched what those Hawkeye State horrors could do with pitchforks and threshers. Again, to be certain, no such looming suits would pervade the prim and proper gala event that this Shepard was shilling him.

For the lanky, luckless Cal from Seattle, it was to avoid creditors seeking to repossess everything had owned in the Evergreen State. Despite his best efforts to establish the next revolutionary coffee and tea franchise in his home city, the homey just wasn't hipster enough, and his prospects plummeted soon after he started.

For the somewhat heavy hustler Peter, it was just to be able to get the money monkey off his back, really. Something about what Lambrick was letting on through this evening made the man believe that after he scored at this shindig, the itch to gamble all his days and dollars away would just fade. His addiction to playing and winning would be cured, once he became set for life courtesy of the Foundation.

For the hapless kook known as Conway, it was to be able to get his life together from the shambles it had been. Although he hadn't touched a drop of sauce in sixteen years, the man still nursed obsessions and compulsions just like he nursed those carafes of brandy all that time ago. Somehow the annihilation caused by alcoholism so many years back still evidenced its aftereffects in his existence, and he became determined to turn this around.

Finally, for the alluring hellion known as Amy, it was to be able to remain on her feet after that hideousness that was her husband had fractured the tenuous family ties she had so wished to enjoy all her life. Emerging from a broken home in her semblance of an upbringing, Amy had hoped against hope that her beau would bring her nothing but happiness. Such wishes were washed out of her psyche when she witnessed her man wringing their daughter's neck in a piddling wading pool. From this incident on, Amy decided that she wouldn't rely on anyone for her future fortune…at least, not after this event at the Foundation.

The paths of these wayward castaways of kismet all converged on one eventful evening, that supposed supper-and-sport that Shepard had so promised. Each of the arrivals' antennae should have arisen upon encountering the foreboding bodyguard Bevans and his insistence that each incomer surrender the most personal possessions of his or her pockets.

All the more should red flags railed in their minds when the host appeared to be more bully than benefactor. In a matter of minutes Lambrick had popped Iris's cherry of carnivorousness by making the sworn vegetarian feast on foie gras and ribeye. Without hesitating he then set into that Sharknado-chow known as Conway, Shepard ushering in a carafe of scotch to scrape away sixteen years of sobriety on his cranky, conspiracy-fearing guest's part…over a decade and a half streak on the wagon, all recanted by one decanter.

And through it all, Lambrick laughed, the emcee reveling in the ruin of Iris and Conway for what to him was a mere pittance, the suave sociopath dining more on his guests' discarded resolve than he did on gristle and goose liver. But these japes, they were only the appetizers to the main course of catastrophic choices, to the choose-your-own-abattoir that the host had planned for the hours to come.

Once Shepard had offered what was most likely an ersatz opportunity to exit the premises, he then ushered in the first of several…entertainments, which inspired anguish more than elation. These conversation pieces of cruelty escalated in lethality as the evening elapsed, they progressing from an apparatus administering lower-intensity electric shocks; to a water-saturated barrel collecting ever more moisture, from the tears of those whose heads were to be submerged within for inordinate periods of time; to many tools of torture ranging from an icepick to the whiplike sjambok to a simple dueling pistol dealing death by way of a single penetrating pellet.

Through the course of the evening, it appeared that all but one, from the washed-up sot to the war-faring soldier, all of them had fallen to one deadly device or another. These dispatchings were manifested under the modus operandi that one choose one undesirable outcome against another—thereby answering the question all the while regarding one "would rather" visit one sort of heinous happenstance against a neighbor, or something else equally unpalatable. After all was said and almost all were dead, only Iris emerged intact, and this only after she had to take down the selfless Lucas with a bullet to the chest fired from the aforementioned pistol. It upset Iris greatly, for her to have to do such a thing in order to win…even just to survive, as she was sure that Lambrick wouldn't let her just leave even with her life if she were to decline the doing-in of the other finalist.

Even more upsetting was the ironic incident of the foulest fate when Iris came home, only to find her ailing brother Raleigh already expired. Fittingly, the boy had played his own hand of "would you rather" while his sister was out, he deciding that it would be preferable to perish than make Iris carry the continuous cross of care for him to possibly no end.

But what was more maddening and appalling than anything Iris experienced during this timeframe…was the withdrawal of the Lambrick Foundation's financial support once this philanthropist of filth had gained wind of Iris's bereavement. In his usual uppity tone, Shepard told the now-isolated angel that he too was abandoning her, now that she no longer required his funding for its original, needful purpose.

…

Now, with no one and nothing left to lose, Iris found that she itched for another evening with the Foundation…

…this time on her terms.

…

…

It was well past the moments of dessert and coffee by the time the most recent winner of the Lamb-a-lympics had the complete clan all trussed up—at least, those who mattered in the scheme of Iris's machinations. The girl had a new game in mind for her haughty former host—and this one didn't involve anyone getting bogged down in making decisions under duress or any of that flaky horseshit.

The foundation-proprietors-turned-forlorn-prisoners looked each to the other in a hemp-hobbled state, the shitten Shepard looking to his decency-devoid son Julian looking to their brilliantly-brutal bodyguard Bevans as not a single one of them could free himself from his roped-up predicament …especially in light of the excessively heavy doses of sedative medications administered to them while unconscious—the same kind of meds Raleigh took in moderation, then took too much of, mere days ago.

"Unlike you hoity-toity wastes of existence," Iris said, she surveying the hasty yet sturdy handiwork she effected among her elegant enemy, "I ain't gonna fuck around with…having you all pick and choose who gets to do what to whom. I mean, heck, Shep…it's like you said about Linda, when remarking about how she couldn't get up to stab someone in the thigh…it's not like right you can really act on what you'd rather do, between options."

Iris looked out the window of the kitchen they all occupied at the moment, in the back of her mind she wondering at how easy it was to pick through the estate's defenses with the sniper rifle on which her late father trained her. Hmph, Raleigh and those shooter video games he played constantly. His sister thought those simulations such a waste of time…primarily for the reason that the real thing was so much more gratifying.

And then the ease of wafting Barden's sleep gas through the Foundation vents, to knock out all the occupants. Pulling it off proved to be cake of the most unhealthy yet most delicious variety.

"So I'm not gonna ape you supercilious shitasses, or any Angry Nerd who my brother always loved to watch and who always went off time and again about how he'd rather do this, do that…rather diarrhea dump here and rotten roadkill skunk asshole there…no.

"I'm much more an I-ris Gamer type."

The putrid pun sailed over the heads of the Lambricks, as none of them knew of the Angry Video Game Nerd or the Irate Gamer. Still, they all blanched a microscopic mote at the tone their former dinner guest now took on…

…as well as at the toys she brought over to play with.

Indeed, the pliers and pruning shears she produced from the dirty duffel bag were enough to force a faint from Julian at least, who was still willowing away between the gas and the meds anyway. But even Bevans broke his determined grit, and Shepard his impassive ogle, as Iris then proceeded to peddle before her a certain individual assumed eliminated some time back.

"We'll start, germs…with my man Bevans," Iris went on, she taking the tools in hand and stepping off to the edge of the kitchen closest to the hallway as her partner-in-cruelty tottered in.

And the reactions all around ranged from disgust to aghast as the murderous men realized Iris had discovered their hidden, thoroughly-tortured treasure in Travis—the man locked away these last few weeks, to be tormented at Julian's leisure—the same now out and on his feet, after Iris surreptitious, serendipitous discovery of him within the hour.

As mentioned above, the lady leered into the secret-agent-emeritus's mug most menacingly now, she displaying pliers and pruners with every intent for them to be put to use…

"Again, folks…I'm doing away with the whole chaos of 'choice' for this evening. The only one 'round here, what's going to make decisions…

"…Well, she's the very arbiter what's got your attention ever so aptly at the moment.

"So…

"…_Bevans._"

She turned to face fully the mirthless mound of a man, the implements she wielded almost inspiring tears in his drugged and gassed dome of chrome.

"You did look _so_ disappointed, days ago…back when Shep broke it to you that you wouldn't get to extract all the teeth from my skull."

Iris primed the pliers in her hands, she squeezing the tool till it squeaked in a most unsettling manner.

"Well, my good man…I've got good news and bad news for you.

"The good is that you won't have to wait till next year to see a full set of someone's teeth yanked out.

"The bad…"

It was all so instantaneous, as Iris absently tossed the shears to the war veteran behind her, just as she lunged in and plucked out her first bicuspid from the bare-pated man's head.

"UNNNHHHHHH!" Bevans couldn't help but cry out, as Iris made for one pull, then another, and then another. All this as Travis began to situate himself most smugly at a critical position below the butler's waist.

Looking across at an audience as captive as she and her dinnermates, days ago, Iris: "Oh, don't worry! You all wanted to see the clippers put to use…well, we've got it covered!

"Again, no need to choose. Just as you rich fucks probably have had it most of your lives…why settle for an option…when you can have it all?"

This last just as Travis began to have at the doorman's ding-dong with the most piercing of instruments. A mere scatch of seconds later, and Iris pointed gleefully to the ground.

"See, Shep? Just like the coin toss, right before the final round." She finished extracting her seventh tooth off the tough guy and took a break to recover his dearest of digits from the floor.

Pointing its intact front end towards Lambrick: "_Heads_ I win…"

And then the bloodied, torn back end: "_…tails_ you lose."

The tandem torture of Bevans by Iris and Travis trawled on for about another ten minutes, most of it consisting of the lady's loosening of the porter's pearly whites. So many molars and incisors later and the MI5 mofo checked out, he fainting to the floor, blood pooling from his cranial head…as well as from the place where his carnal one used to be. "It's alright, Shep; we're done with him now. Just like you said with Lucas, after he did himself in the eye under duress: 'All done!' He'll bleed out in no time, your right hand man…now so abruptly cut off from you."

The way the kitchen's new mistress rolled her eyes an instant later made Shepard and Julian alike think of the woman they shared in kind, of late, that harlot whom Junior revived not long after she was dragged away from her failed four-minute bout at the barrel. The slut was safe, to be sure, in Shep's master suite…no way this idiot bitch, who couldn't even land a position as a restaurant hostess, would ever have the resourcefulness and intelligence to ever…

"Oh! I almost forgot."

Iris patted Travis reassuringly on the shoulder, then nodded to the Lambricks as well as their bald eunuch on the ground as she scampered away a hot second.

(Hmm…bald eunuch…that sounds so familiar to this author…)

(No…must resist it…the urge to make the miserable Marvel reference…)

In the time it took this author to forcibly wrest away the urge to succumb to the free-associational temptation, the lurid Lambrick contest queen once again, alighting in the kitchen doorway…

…this time with the most ravishing of runner-ups, all trussed up and shivering at her side.

Snickering cruelly as the other girl tried to hop away a second, Iris, as she hugged the other closer to her side: "She is a feisty one, isn't she, Lame-Pricks? More than enough woman for the both of you—even at once, I'm sure, as I'm certain you perverts have tried.

"Anyways, Slutty and Chucklefucks…again, you won't have to be saddled with the burden of decision; I'm the on what's strangling' the reins this evening, and I'm not letting go.

"_Aaaaas_ such…I've deemed that it's Amy here, who'll go next. And for this one…sorry, Travis…the pleasure's all mine."

Iris slammed Amy hard backfirst against the kitchen wall as the blonde bent down a second later to retrieve that same icepick from weeks ago, now from a basin on the far wall. Gingerly the lady strolled back, she flipping the sticker in her hand like a child as she went.

Waved the implement menacingly in the other woman's face, then headfaked it at Amy's eye, causing her almost to flinch into it and impale herself, ironically. "Whoa there! We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, now do we?

"After all, I can't have you upstaging my schtick."

Then with another feint to her comely captive's ribcage: "Upstaging my _stick_…you know?"

Iris sighed, she catching the glint of satisfaction in Travis's own eyes and she winking readily at him. Then to Lambrick, to ape and one-up Amy's own line against Iris's own interest, during that icepick/sjambok predicament…

"Can I stab her _EVERYWHERE?!_"

And before even a whimper could whine out of Shepard or his shit of a scion…

[SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK SHHHNK]

The glamorous rail-thin figure became as rife with gaps as the MI5 emeritus's mouth.

"Bet she's never been penetrated that many times at once…even in the role she once played in real life!" Iris cried, most fourth-wall-breakingly. "Even that set of lungs she's got…can't withstand all those impassioned thrusts. Shame."

Whimpering a bit Julian's ermine eyes remained fixed on the perforated jezebel who had jumped between his bed and Daddy's. He didn't even note in his peripherals the Iraq-touring tough who was rolling up on him, with an all-too familiar decanter in hand.

Still, it was Iris who did most all the talking. "You, Shep, had some of us…even before the real festivities were in full fling…had some of us compromise our scruples, made us give up a personal discipline we cherished most of our lives, for the sake of a few…piddling pennies, by your estimation. That old coot Conway, you might remember: you had him eject from a sixteen-year sobriety-wagon ride, all for $50,000 and the contents of this container.

"You said that the drink was what could save Conway, just as it ruined him before."

Filled once again to the brim with smooth gold liquid, the decanter hovered now via Travis's sure hand over the head of Lambrick the Second.

"Now, Sheps…it looks as if…"

[SPLLLLLIIIIIISSSSSHHHHH]

"…the happenstance pendulum is shifting back the other way."

The proud Foundation proprietor could only stew most passively, he still done in quite deeply by sedative, as he beheld his son now doused in drink, in vintage most volatile.

Iris once more, her back to the wall right next to the ragged, daggered doll that was Amy, all wrecked on the floor:

"You know, it's like, when you have a song, like a song in your head, you know? You can't get it out of your mind, no matter what you do. …Sometimes I find if I play it again, the song, it finally goes away.

"So you know, right now the song is metaphorically, all those images you forced in front of me…making me see a grown man, rather mature, sacrifice all he'd worked so hard for, for the sake of a little scotch and a little scratch."

Julian's eyes went from beady to fully bloated when he espied what Travis took out next.

"Or you know, having just to hear…let alone see…a man getting de-hand-itated—that's my own little invented term for having a hand taken off, like 'de-cap-itated,' you know? Anyway, a man losing his hand by the most concussive means imaginable.

"Well, Trav and I, we're gonna do our best to reprise the tune. At your expense, of course."

Across the kitchen, Lambrick followed his son's gaze to the small, long item lying in his lap. Just as they looked back to Iris, Travis now:

"Yes, it's the other three-quarters of the stick you handed to Peter. It'd make three times the mess too, I'd imagine."

"Please man, I said I'd respected you," bleated Julian, the kid as desperate-looking as he did, in another, very ambulatory, dead reality, just before he was struck upside the head with a bat and had his throat slashed. "I said I appreciated all your service as a soldier…"

"Well, then, you'll really get a kick out of what I'm about to do," said Travis, he strolling leisurely, loomingly around Julian's seat. "I was an expert with ordnance in Fallujah, you know. Little shits like that between your legs…I mean the firecracker, that is…that ain't nothin' compared to what I've handled before."

Before Julian could register the motion, Travis darted in with a lighter and lit the long fuse at the end of the three-quarter-stick.

"And by the way, you simpering shitpiece…you say you respected me…but you also called me Pig. Which defines you just well…but I would say that, at the moment there's a much, much more fitting word to use than 'Pig.'"

When the crummy captive responded not with words, but only with whimpering, the venerable veteran finished the thought himself.

[SPPPAAAAAKKKKKK]

[FWWWOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHHH]

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

"And that's 'Bacon.'"

So numbed-out was Shepard that he couldn't join in his son's immolation-immersed scream of agony…but he could still watch. As the flames flowing from Julian intensified, warming the room and flickering patterns reflecting on the windows and white walls, Lambrick Senior could only stare out dumbly, unable to react with any more magnitude.

Blinking with a perfectly placid expression on her face as she watched the Julian Torch blaze on, Iris: "You know, this really is doing it for me! Now the memory of Peter's hand getting blown off is totally becoming pushed back, in light of this far more horrific sight. Thank you, Lambricks!"

Iris and Travis continued to watch the effer-turned-effigy a bit longer…

…then the soldier stepped forward with a sturdy towel,

[WHAPPP WHAPPP WHAPPP WHAPPP WHAPPP WHAPPP]

the man whipping hard repeatedly, be beating the shit out of the smoldering son with the huge rag, to cause the conflagration to die down.

Having had her fill of the perv-pyre that was her would-be rapist Julian, Iris, to the misery of a man bound up across the room:

"So Conway, then.

"And what you made me do…having me take down flank and foie gras, for $10,000."

The lady produced a plastic bag filled with a foulness that no one save herself could describe. Sprightly she crossed the floor, held the synthetic sack over the fucker philanthropist's head.

"I'll tell ya…between the ordeal of eating that shit…and the abomination of finding my brother in the state that he was, at home…it was enough to make me lose my lunch! Or dinner, as it were."

It was just then that Shepard noted the semiliquid mess had a very reddish-brown tinge to it.

"I reneged on the wager, as it were, and as you can see. Unfortunately, I don't have the ten thousand anymore. All done used up on meds for myself and such.

"The upchucked-ground-chuck, and the gagged-out goose liver, on the other hand…"

[SPPPLLLLLLOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHHH]

A second later, Lambrick wore the same food he foisted upon the lady, the man's mug now covered with chow, making him look fit for the most contemptuous of colonies. Consistent with this, the blonde who barged into the evil men's evening, now most spooneristically:

"Well, Leper Shambrick…that's just literally a taste of what I've got all…cooked up, for you."

Because the sadistic shit still had so much steak and goose in his eyes, he couldn't see what was now being done to his son.

But about fifteen to thirty seconds later—that same timeframe he gave his guests to make mortally-morose choices—he felt, right down into his lap, a bit of what was done to his flesh and blood.

"I done gone and spilled the appetizer all over ya, Sheppy…but we got the main course all ready and intact for ya!

Motioning the sliced-off segment of scion towards the last alive captive's mouth, Iris taunted once again. "You can't say no to this most _dehhhcadent_ fool-grease we've got here. It's a bit overcooked…but the wine-sau…, er, _scotch glace_ makes it go down a bit more easily."

Really it was easier forcing the flame-broiled gibs of Julian down Shepard's throat with Travis toweling over the top half of their "host"'s head a minute later, the ad-hoc waterboarding washing the shreds of offspring down Shepard's hatch all the more headily.

But not all of it flowed through so freely.

[MMMFFF, KAFFF KAFFF HHHAAACCCCCKKKKK KAFFF]

"What's that, Shep?" Iris inquired sardonically, as she watched Lambrick's puss turn puce with strangulation. "Son got your tongue? I understand.

"Well, you don't have to fret none. Way Raleigh's meds take effect, all the muscles of the body are far more relaxed…even those of the throat. As such, you get caught up in a choke…even that goes from being a sixty-second calamity to a several-hour crucible.

"But don't worry…we're not done with you yet."

She smiled into the man's now-fuchsia face as Travis knotted his towel, then looped a small segment of it over the man's head and tightened. The vet pulled and Lambrick lurched backward, his figure forced to the floor with his harried head suspended up by the makeshift noose.

"After all…we still have one more round to go."

The towel-threads tore into the hapless Lambrick's throat as he was dragged all along the hallways of his own lair, his esophagus burning between the noose on the outside and the "fool-grease" within, yes…

…but his ears even more in agony at the crowing that the leading lady took it upon herself to perpetrate, all about the house…

"_Would you like to swing on a starrr…?_

_ Carry douche-peens home in a jarrr…?_

_ And be better off than you arrrrre…?_

_ Or WOULD YOU RATHER be a…Lamb?"_

Iris's lyrics lacerated the man's aural capacities through and through as the Achilles that was Travis continued hauled his Hector-Shepard all around the Lambrick Foundation floors.

_"A Lamb is an _ANIMAL _with shit in his throat!_

_ His gullet is too glut for him to gloat!_

_ As for his guests, their lives he never leavens,_

_ He cuts them off quick, like Travis did the baldy-balls of Bendis…!"_

The throttle-train came to a screeching halt a second at this.

"OOPS!

"I…I meant Bevans! _BEVANS!_

"Huh, huh…Ben…Bend…Bendis…WOW! Where the eff did _that_ come from?!"

Don't look at this author, Iris; he doesn't know, either!

In any case, this bald blunder put the brakes (mercifully) on any more singing, and it didn't matter anyway…Ire and Trav were at the final round chamber anyhow.

With a grunt the vet threw open the hefty door to the walk-in freezer, just adjacent to the kitchen in which the abovementioned slut, butler, and Shepard's shit son spent their final moments. The last few minutes or so were just a bit of an early victory lap for the survivors of Lambrick's last game.

He seemed to be passing out a second, the malefactor motherfucker who brought all this on Iris, Travis, and the others. So the leading lady, with a healthy helping of bluntness:

"Hey! HEY!

"RETARD DABNEY COLEMAN! STAY WITH US!

"After all...I got another helping for ya…another pile of meat that's _all yours._"

Quickly Travis trussed Shep up harshly within a hunk of meat hanging from a chain. The going was much rougher than Lambrick expected—he couldn't posit why it felt as if his skin were being shredded aside from the biting cold.

"Yeah…those are razor blades, all lined up inside the slab for you. Just like the one you forced upon poor little Lucas.

"He was a good man, you know—better than any of us at that table. Even Travis, he's got to admit, he chose to shock ol' Luke when the time came down for him to choose…but that Iowan Adonis, he did nothing of the sort of hurt anyone there. Even offered Travis a chance to stick him with the icepick, rather than have the soldier sustain another lashing.

Iris braced herself against the cold of the locker as she let herself in a bit more, to confront Lambrick. "But you know…_you know _what happened in the finals, Shep…don't you? I took him out. Felt I had to; hell, no fuckin' _way_ you would have let us leave alive that evening, empty-handed or no—there had to be a single winner in the end, or nothing but losers.

"But again…that hero of the Heartland Lucas…I shot him, heartlessly, in the end. If I could do that, to such a good person…

"What in fuck makes you think I'd visit anything less upon you?!"

Raleigh's bereaved sibling strolled along, behind Shepard…

…then darted in, to squeeze the slab hard, sliding the razors cruelly across Lambrick's flesh.

"UGGGHHHGGGGGG," was all the man-monster could manage, between the choke and the cold he suffered.

"One more thing, Shep," said Iris, as Travis began to depart from the freezer. "One more little reference to the outside world, before I shut you in here for good.

"I never really amounted to much out in the workplace…yes, couldn't even get a hostess gig. I guess that's what you get for being a Comparative Literature major.

"But you know, I was very, very passionate about what I read in undergrad. And Dante was a damn favorite of mine. You ever read the _Inferno?_

"Well, you can't answer me, of course. Lots of people think the bottom of the abyss is all fire…it's not. All of it's freezy, frosty ice. And the ones who occupy it…are those well-versed in treachery."

Travis watched on emotionlessly from the kitchen doorway as Iris continued.

"There was one part of Hell's lowest Circle, reserved for those traitorous to guests. One story always stuck out in my mind—and believe you me, it certainly resonated, the other night I was here. In the tale, of all people a friar, seemingly benevolent and such…he goes and has all his guests murdered, at a dinner feast. Has the assassins come in just as he's pretending to call for figs to be served. Now, I can't remember the friar's name…"

(It's Fra Alberigo…this author didn't remember it, either, and had to look it up just now. Only like friggin' Dantean scholars would probably know right off).

…"But anyhoo, again he was a man, who came off all nice, and pleasant, and even perhaps fucking fatherly…all up until the trap was sprung.

"Feels kind of familiar, doesn't it? Well, as with what the Friar suffered, in that coldest hollow of the hereafter…so too will you meet a similar end. …Or perhaps it's a beginning! A prologue, a…preview, of what's to await you too, in Hell."

Giving the giant suspended grub one last squeeze, again agonizing the Lambrick lying within, Iris started toward the door to join Travis. Just as she stood alongside him, she placing an arm around his shoulder:

"But don't worry! We're staying here, to keep you company in your final hours. And yes, it will be hours.

"You were always so stingy with those scant seconds…fifteen here and thirty there, for people to make those deadly decisions, Shep…but here, thanks in large part to just enough of a heaping helping of Raleigh's medications, you can and will freeze to death, bleed to death, and choke to death, all in the span of, oh…about fifteen hours. And Trav and I will lie back and enjoy every fifteen-to-thirty second increment of it.

"Because you see, Shepard…late in life, at least, you were a sociopath. You didn't give a flying fuck, during our contest, whether any of us lived or died.

"But Travis and I…we're fucking _psychopaths._ And we're _very_ vested…very _invested_ in watching you, in having you suffer.

As Shepard spluttered one last time, his frame frothing as it frosted within the frozen slab, Iris:

"And no…given the choice…given fifteen days, fifteen hours, or fifteen seconds to decide…there's nothing else we would rather do."


End file.
